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Scalloped Sweet-breads

A baked dish of sweetbreads in a custard sauce topped with buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Scalloped Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut or break the sweetbreads into small sections.

  2. Warm the cream in a saucepan to prepare a rich sauce.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the warm cream.

  4. Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens like custard.

  5. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Mix the seasoned sauce with the sweetbreads.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a scallop dish or shells.

  2. Cover the dish with buttered breadcrumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crumbs are brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when cooked gently in the sauce.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce that coats the sweetbreads.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm cream into a custard-like sauce that binds the dish together.
Buttered breadcrumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven, adding color and a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over hot water. Egg yolks set when heated gently; if the heat is too high they scramble and turn grainy, so the sauce must thicken slowly over hot water rather than direct heat.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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